Hip Tastes Blog

SF Dining As Sport
filed under: Ramblings

Sometimes I forget that dining is a sport in San Francisco. And I don't mean sport in a fun, recreational sort of way - no, I'm talking competitive sport here. I was patently reminded of this the other night when I met a food publicist pal out for dinner without a reservation at new SF hot spot Salt House.

Salt House is so popular that it's managed to ratched up in excess of 180 reviews on Yelp in its short tenure as a resto. It's also, according to my pal, one of the most in-demand spots for reservations on OpenTable. Which means, in short, that it's always ridiculously crowded. So much so, in fact, that I nearly had a panic attack while waiting to eat the other night in the spot's obscenely congested bar area.

Frustratingly, my pal was perfectly at ease amidst all the hoopla.

And that's when it dawned on me: as a food publicist who dines out literally every night at the city's hottest and most difficult-to-get-into restos, she was in her element. When it comes to diners, she's the foodie equivalent of a well-conditioned athlete. And me, well - as a writer who's just spent several months in mostly deadline-induced solitude, I was at the other end of the spectrum. I was, you might say, the panting out-of-shape couch potato struggling to complete a single lap around the track.

Or - in the context of our evening - to make it through an agonizing hour of standing around while trying to poach a couple of bar stools where we could perch while eating a few morsels of highly contrived comfort food. And just when this goal seemed impossibly out of reach, I noted the determination in my friend's eye and knew we'd succeed. You see, the game of survival of the restaurant-of-the-moment fittest was upon us and, damnit, this girl was gonna win.

And win we did, just as I thought I couldn't take another moment of elbow jabbing in the waiting area. What followed? A couple hours of girl talk, industry jabber and some decent food, although I'm hard-pressed to recall any details. As a food critic I failed miserably that evening: I can barely recall what we had, let alone if I liked it. I think I was the dining equivalent of a dehydrated athlete: after the excrutiating wait my head was kind of fuzzy, things were a little out of focus and it was all I could do to stay erect upon my stool.

The moral? Don't dine with the fittest unless you're in decent shape yourself. (That, and I need to get out more, stat!) For a real review of Salt House - AKA Crowded House - and its cuisine go here.

Posted by Courtney on March 9, 2007 06:24 PM